The County Durham and Darlington Acute Hospitals NHS Trust blames problems in recruiting doctors and pressures to meet new European legislation on working hours for the shortfall.

Now the trust, which runs the University Hospital of North Durham and four community hospitals, is predicting a year-end deficit of £3.87m.

A report to next week's trust board meeting blames a £3.1m shortfall in funding for the new consultants' contract for part of the deficit.

The hospitals are having difficult filling consultant vacancies and is a `damaging' £2m over budget on using agency staff to fill the gap.

The £440,000 cost of meeting new European Working Time Directive legislation for junior doctors has also been highlighted as a major cost.

Today British Medical Association council northern representative Dr George Rae said the situation was not unique.

He said: "All hospitals are being confronted with the pressure of meeting new working time directives.

"They have the same amount of doctors, but they are allowed to work less hours. When that is exacerbated by a problem in attracting staff and locums having to be employed to meet manpower needs, then the situation is bound to be even worse."

But Dr Rae said there were no short-term answers.

"We have something like 50% less doctors per head of population than other European countries, so more needs to be done to attract people to the profession and to provide attractive contracts for permanent staff," he added.